The UK seaside town with thriving independent shops and £52k homes

Along the Scottish coast, one pretty high street is the type of place you shop for pleasure rather than need. Boutiques sit alongside cafes, quirky restaurants and homeware stores, while pubs and restaurants serve the younger crowd.

Many owe Prestwick's success to the smaller shops, which serve the independent community and keep the larger chains at bay, and others love how the high street works together as a community. Its high street was even named the 'Scottish Champion' in the 2019 Great British High Street Awards. Since Covid, rising yet affordable house prices suggest newcomers are discovering its appeal too. Yet even the prettiest of high streets has its struggles, with some noting that online shopping is having its fatal impact on footfall.

Sandrina, who works at Cecchini Estate Agents in Ayr, has always been local to the area, having lived in nearby Troon, and she said she's witnessed a transformation compared with 40 or 50 years ago.

She described Prestwick as “bustling" and thriving, and painted a picture of a town of two halves: shoppers during the day, and young people flocking to “thriving” and "busy" pubs in the evening.

“At night-time, it’s buzzing with young people,” she said. “Whereas my age group, so I’m 57, we’ll go to Prestwick and shop, and have more of a nice, leisurely day out."

She added: "And the community within the shopkeepers is just lovely as well. They just support each other, which is nice.”

By contrast, she said Ayr’s high street, which is ten minutes down the road, hasn’t fared as well.

“I don’t go into the area anymore. I go in to get my hair done and that’s it. I go there and come back and I wouldn’t spend the day or afternoon in Ayr, wandering round shops. I would in Prestwick.”

On house prices, she said the area had seen a “huge, huge increase since Covid” — as much as 30 to 40%. Even so, newcomers are drawn in because “you can still get a lot for your money.”

Right now for example, you can get a three-bedroom maisonette in the heart of Prestwick for £90,000, as marketed on Rightmove. A two-bed refurbishment project is going for £52,000.

In neighbouring Ayr, Gordon Pickens, whose traditional family butcher's has been in the town since 1888, agreed that Prestwick was thriving. He said Prestwick's high street was faring better thanks to its smaller premises.

"They haven't got the big department stores, so independent shops can afford to open up there. Much cheaper rents and rates," he explained.

Karen McClelland, who runs a three-bed bed and breakfast in Ayr, held a similar view. She explained: "I think that's because they don't have a shopping centre of any kind so all the shops in the high street have stayed kind of occupied."

However, the story may be slightly different among some shop owners in the town itself.

Heather Newlands, who has run the homeware and gift shop The Keekin' Glass in Prestwick for 12 years, said online shopping had had a huge impact.

"I don't know if I would totally agree that it's thriving. I would say the football has dropped significantly in the last year," she said. "We also used to have the shop next door and we had to close that in May because it just wasn't busy enough."

"And unfortunately, we're now starting to get an influx of vape shops and American sweet shops, that type of thing."

"Don't get me wrong, we still mainly have a lot of independent shops, but we've got a few sitting empty now that we never used to have. That's happened in the last year and a half, two years."

Ms Newlands praised the support of the local community. "People in our town do try and shop locally as much as they can,” she said. “But people have to keep shopping here.”

She said independent shopkeepers go “the extra mile” to give customers the "best customer service that you can give,” but without high footfall, you can only go so far.

"And I know we're not alone. Speaking to a lot of my agents that cover the whole of Scotland and some of them in the north of England as well, and the online thing is a killer."

With thriving high streets like this becoming increasingly rare amid mass closures of major brands, it seems independents could play a key role in keeping them alive.

The answer, it seems, lies in shopping local and also adopting free parking where possible, which Ms Newlands notes is a “huge bonus” to keep traffic coming into the town.